By Francine Black, Staff ReporterSCHOLASTIC INCORPORATED, a United States-based company, on Wednesday donated 50,000 books to the Centre of Excellence for Teacher Training (CETT) Caribbean programme, to be distributed across five regional countries.
The material will be distributed between Jamaica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize and Guyana.
Jamaica will receive 30,000 of the books, representing the first instalment of a three-year donation totalling 50,000 books to the island by Scholastic.
The books were handed over to teachers' colleges which offer primary education as a programme of study.
Teachers' colleges function as a cluster that monitor and guide reading programmes in 40 project schools identified under the CETT.
READING MATERIAL
Wednesday's donations come in light of the centre's shortage of reading material, especially at its project schools.
Thomas Tighe, United States Deputy Chief of Mission, described Scholastic's gesture as an example worthy of emulation by other corporate entities. He said the U.S. recognised the need to forge closer ties with the Caribbean in educational pursuits.
"Our nations also acknowledged the critical importance of affordable, quality education and training for economic growth, social development and the reduction of poverty in the region. In other words, education is key to our hemisphere's continued development," he said.
The CETT was started in 2002, as part of a US$20 million Presidential initiative announced at the Quebec Summit of the Americas in April 2001.
Following the summit, three CETT offices in the Caribbean, the Andean region of South America, and Central America were established.
REGION
Minister of Education Maxine Henry-Wilson, official speaker at the handing-over ceremony on Wednesday, said CETT, which is sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development, provides an opportunity for the region to develop its own reading model.
This, she said, could be achieved through the studies and pilot programmes being conducted by the centre.
Professor Errol Miller, project director for the Caribbean CETT office said the Caribbean centre has been quite active since its inception.
CETT has designed numerous intervention programmes to deal with schools' reading deficiencies which will be tested, Prof. Miller said, during January to June.
A donation of US$100,000 by Alcoa Limited was also announced by Mr. Tighe. The money will be used to extend and build additional resource centres to make reading more accessible to students.
